Led by Northwestern University, the research team conducted a statistical analysis of data from hospitals and clinics across China, France, Germany, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States.

The researchers noted that patients from countries with high COVID-19 mortality rates, such as Italy, Spain and the UK, had lower levels of vitamin D compared to patients in countries that were not as severely affected.

This does not mean that everyone — especially those without a known deficiency — needs to start hoarding supplements, the researchers caution.

"While I think it is important for people to know that vitamin D deficiency might play a role in mortality, we don't need to push vitamin D on everybody," said Northwestern's Vadim Backman, who led the research. "This needs further study, and I hope our work will stimulate interest in this area. The data also may illuminate the mechanism of mortality, which, if proven, could lead to new therapeutic targets."

Vitamin D could be a key factor in the fight against Covid-19. Three international studies have shown correlations, and a new US study shows correlation while explaining the medical reason for the correlations and a reason for the racial death differences and the surprising lack of symptoms in the homeless.

The US study, "Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe COVID-19," was done in New Orleans. It showed the Vitamin D Insufficiency, VDI, prevalence in ICU patients was 84.6% vs. 57.1% in floor patients. Insufficiency is defined as < 30ng/mL. The study states that "VDI affects 80-90% of the African American population."

Scientists are still learning about the ways the coronavirus moves through the body. Viral particles have been found in saliva, blood, urine, and stool samples.

A new study, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medicine Association, found the coronavirus in semen, too. Particles were detected in the semen of both men who had active infections and those who had recovered.

The researchers aren't yet sure, however, whether the finding means the virus can be sexually transmitted.

Roughly 16% of the men studied had the virus in their semen

A team of Chinese researchers took semen samples from 38 male COVID-19 patients in a hospital in the Henan province, which borders Wuhan, between January 26 and February 16.

The researchers detected the virus, whose official name is SARS-CoV-2, in the semen in six of the 38 patients — roughly 16%. Of the six, four were at the acute stage of active infection and two had recovered.

The policy of freeing up bed space in NHS Hospitals and encouraging people not to burden the health service has had fatal consequences, and is likely in the long-run to claim more lives than COVID-19.

'Protect the NHS'. It's a phrase we've heard ad nauseam in Britain the past few weeks, but has the slogan and the policies underpinning it, actually done more harm than good? The evidence strongly suggests it has. Rather than saving lives, it's actually claimed them in large numbers.

On 17th March, NHS trusts in England were instructed to 'free-up the maximum possible in-patient and critical care capacity'. That meant a large scale discharge of 'all hospital in-patients who are medically fit to leave' and stopping all 'non-urgent elective operations' for at least three months from 15th April at the latest.

How many of these sick patients, rushed out of the hospital to 'free up' beds for COVID-19 patients have subsequently died? This could help explain the sharp rise innon-COVID-19 excess deathsin early April.

Heart disease is the most common underlying health condition in coronavirus patients admitted to hospital intensive care units across the country, it emerged yesterday.

An analysis of the first 327 of the sickest patients with the virus revealed that half (165) had chronic heart disease.

Chronic respiratory disease was diagnosed in 76 patients and another 74 had diabetes.

Comment: It's amazing that in one article they can effectively debunk the entire coronavirus shenanigans. The numbers are unimpressive, almost all the deaths are present with co-morbidities (which is really a misnomer - no one is dying from the coronavirus, they're dying with it) and social distancing measures are really accomplishing nothing but authoritarian compliance. If only people were able to read what is actually being said and started asking questions.

Scientists have discovered that eyes and brains in rodents seem to have uncannily similar drainage systems used for self cleaning, and there's reason to think this might apply to us, too.

This sort of maintenance is necessary to wash away waste cells and fluids, and we know that brains make use of a tiny network of pipes known as the glymphatic system, similar to the lymphatic system that clears out rubbish from the rest of the body.

New tests on mice and rats show that the structures at the back of their eyes - like the optic nerve and the retina - take a page or two from the glymphatic system playbook. In the absence of the standard lymphatic vessels, they funnel waste products through a network a lot like the one the brain uses.

The global lockdown caused by Covid-19 risks a "devastating" surge in tuberculosis cases, with nearly 1.4 million additional deaths from the world's biggest infectious killer by 2025, new research showed on Wednesday.

TB, a bacterial infection that normally attacks patients' lungs, is largely treatable yet still infects an estimated 10 million people every year.

In 2018, it killed around 1.5 million people, according to the World Health Organisation, including more than 200,000 children.

Since effective medication exists, the world's TB response is centred on testing and treating as many patients as possible.

But as Covid-19 forces governments to place populations on lockdown, new disease models showed that social distancing could lead to a disastrous rebound in TB infections - the effects of which are set to persist for years.

This is because social distancing will make it impossible for health care workers to test vulnerable populations and for patients to access ongoing treatments.

Comment: This is just one potential unintended consequence of the Covid-19 lockdown. It's looking like the cure really will be worse - orders of magnitude worse - than the disease.

Excess white fat causes obesity, which in turn can drive diabetes and many other metabolic diseases that are growing at epidemic rates around the world. But all white fat is not born equal. For instance, "intra-abdominal" fat, i.e. fat within the belly, is known to carry higher risks of disease than "subcutaneous" fat that sits under the skin and often accumulates in the hips and thighs. Researchers from Joslin Diabetes Center and Boston University now have discovered different types of white fat cells, even within a single site, that may play distinct roles in disease.

"A central question in our research on metabolic disease is whether white fat cells in different parts of the body, and even within a single part of the body, are different enough that some might predispose you to disease and some might not," says C. Ronald Kahn, MD, Joslin's Chief Academic Officer and Head of the Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism. "If so, determining the mechanisms for these differences could lead to development of novel therapies for diabetes, obesity and related conditions."

Earlier studies had identified several types of white fat cells in mice, but this is one of the first to discover multiple types in humans, says Kahn, who is co-senior author on a Nature Communications paper presenting the work and professor at Harvard Medical School.

Comment: Previous research had pointed to the idea that brown fat was good, burning more calories and increasing metabolism, while white fat was bad, leading to metabolic disorders. The current study has found, perhaps predictably, that the picture is much more nuanced. More research is obviously needed, but it will be interesting to see how different white fat cells changes the metabolism and what factors influence what sort of white fat a person has.

As Germany reopens the doors to churches, hair salons and museums after more than a month of closures, a new study suggests that the number of residents infected by COVID-19 may be as high as 10 times the number confirmed by officials.

The study, conducted by the University of Bonn researchers but not yet peer-reviewed, found that as many as 1.8 million people in Germany may have been infected by coronavirus, as opposed to the 160,000 cases confirmed by officials, Reuters reported. Additionally, the researchers said that as many as one in five of those who contracted the novel coronavirus were asymptomatic.

Comment: Once again the evidence is pointing to the virus being far more benign than people were first lead to believe.

In Episode 1, the history of vaccines, smallpox, vaccine safety, and the current CDC schedule...

Welcome to the first episode of the eye-opening 9-part documentary series The Truth About Vaccines, produced by documentary makers and health activists Ty & Charlene Bollinger. This is the largest and most comprehensive series ever produced on the topic of vaccines.

Comment: Episode 1 was apparently first published online in 2017. In the meantime all 9 episodes have been produced by this husband and wife team. We also have here the final episode (#9), published by them online last month:

We recommend that Sott.net readers go to their website and support them by registering to watch all 9 parts, which include interviews with numerous scientists, researchers, journalists and activists on the vast and dangerous machine that has become 'the vaccine cartel'.

And no, this is not 'anti-vaxxer' misinformation. This is informed criticism of MODERN vaccines and the truly devastating health crises they have created...